The Justice Within
by trixyregina
Summary: Auror Teddy Lupin has just been handed the case of a lifetime, but when he finds himself injured, his life starts heading down a darker road that he ever could have imagined.
1. Part I

_The Justice Within_

_Part I_

At first glance, the case they had been given was hardly unusual.

The magical world, while somewhat more contained than the Muggle one, had its fair share of homicides, and it made Teddy sick. Things like that were the reason he had decided to become an Auror in the first place. To keep people safe, stop crime and violence, and bring the perpetrators to justice. It wasn't as if he fancied himself some kind of… vigilante or something, but his work afforded him with the opportunity to put bad guys away and that allowed him some peace of mind when he locked his doors at night.

The man in question had been found lying in an alleyway near Knockturn Alley, the report said, and had been long dead before he had been discovered. Teddy scanned the autopsy. No sign that the Killing Curse had been used, rather the coroner surmised that the victim had died due to the trauma from a chest wound, which had occurred when the man's heart had been –

Teddy paused and reread the sentence over a few times to be sure.

"Owen, have you read this?" he said to his partner.

Owen looked up from the sports section of the Prophet that he'd been reading. "You mean the report?"

"No, the autopsy."

"Yeah."

"Did you see – "

"About the guy's heart? I saw. Is that twisted or what? My guess is it had to be still beating when it – "

"I think I may throw up if you finish that sentence."

Owen smirked at him. "What, you can read about it, but you can't hear it? That weak stomach is going to get you into trouble some day."

"I'm not the one that got sick last weekend after too much Firewhiskey," Teddy teased, standing up and grabbing his robes off the back of his chair. "Come on, let's go look at the crime scene while there still might be a chance of finding something."

"I thought you said you were having dinner with Victoire tonight? Isn't it your anniversary or something?"

Teddy thought fleetingly of the plans they had made to celebrate and shrugged Owen's concern off. "She'll understand. A murderer on the loose is more important than some dinner."

"Hey, she's your girlfriend."

They passed by his Uncle Harry's secretary, Charlotte on their way out, and she flashed them both a smile.

"Hey Char," Teddy said and cleared his throat. Charlotte always seemed to make him nervous somehow.

She looked extremely pretty that day, the light purple of her robes bringing out her dark eyes and her hair fell around her face in long chocolate ringlets. "How are you?"

"Busy." She gathered several huge stacks of files into her arms and Teddy resisted the urge to carry them for her. "I've actually got to run to a meeting, but I'll see you both later!"

He watched her walk off down the hallway and shook his head as if to clear it.

Teddy thought he loved Victoire. Really. Sometimes he was so sure that he nearly told her so. But there were definitely times where she could be a bit rough around the edges.

Teddy had once had a distant curiosity about whether that sharpness might have come from her father, a reckless, thrill-seeking Cursebreaker if there ever was one, or from her mother and her Veela background. He told himself that it was Uncle Bill's bluntness that she had inherited, mostly because the idea that she was descended from a creature that could transform into an enormous bird, beak and talons poised to strike, kind of freaked him out.

But even if that was true, he found could take her verbal barbs in stride and weather her tempestuous rages, because while there may have been tinges of the animal, it was wrapped tightly, securely, almost invisibly, inside pure, beautiful, incandescent Victoire.

Sometimes though, whenever he and Victoire had a particularly vicious fight, it was hard not to admire Charlotte's slim wrists as she shuffled parchment around her desk, or the soft tones she spoke in. While Victoire often said things in kitschy, vibrant primary colors, Charlotte's words seemed to be tinted in misty pastels.

Still, Teddy told himself, she could never measure up. Like her words, she was just a pale imitation of the woman he was with. No one could ever replace Victoire, with her perfection, her imperfection. She was a shining beacon of everything he ever wanted. Charlotte was just a passing fancy – a tiny emotional affair.

Nothing to feel any guilt over.

And each time Teddy had to tell himself that, he tried to believe it a little more.

* * *

><p>The flat was dark when Teddy came back from scoping out the alleyway crime scene with Owen late that night. He fumbled for his wand for a moment, casting a quick <em>Lumos<em> and nearly jumped out of his skin when the light reflected off Victoire's hair and eyes from her place in the chair nearby.

"Jesus Christ, Victoire! You nearly gave me heart failure." He clutched at his chest and tried to slow the frantic beating of his heart. "Why are you sitting in the dark?"

"What's the new case?"

Teddy blinked. "What?"

The silver light of his spell made her eyes look eerily lamp-like and it shone against her white teeth as she said, "You obviously worked late. What's the case?"

"Oh. Of course." The blood had finally stopped pulsing in his ears and he fiddled with the clasp of his cloak, trying to take it off. "Owen and I were given a murder case earlier and we went to go look at the crime scene while it was still fresh. You wouldn't believe what happened to – "

Hanging the cloak up on its peg by the door, he flipped on the light as Victoire bit through his explanation.

"You stood me up on our anniversary for a crime scene." Her voice was flat and cold like a sliver of ice and Teddy was surprised the temperature of the room didn't go down to match it.

Oh. The dinner. The dinner for their anniversary. He had completely forgotten in his eagerness to solve this new case.

"What? No! It wasn't like that. This was really important to the case. If we'd left it till morning – "

She stood up, agitated. Victoire was tall, height fairly even with his, and her eyes were piercing, blisteringly blue with ice-cold fire. "It's always something isn't it? An alleyway you _need_ to see, an interrogation you _have_ to do, alligators loose in London sewers that _need_ to be captured, a body you _have_ to talk to the coroner about – "

"Those were all important too! And this isn't just any case, Victoire. It's a homicide! There's a murderer running free that needs to be brought to justice before he has a chance to kill again."

Victoire's anger had always been sort of brutal, filled with hard edges and executed in almost perfect savageness, always going straight for the jugular. Like a wild animal, she didn't fight just to injure. Her goal was to totally incapacitate her opponent.

"I thought things might be different after we moved in together, but they aren't. You'll never stop putting your obsession with justice over me, will you?"

"I don't – it's not like that, Victoire. I swear."

When he was younger, Teddy had often wondered that someone as beautiful and delicate-looking as Victoire could be so untamed and raw sometimes. In the end though, that was what fascinated him:

Her wildness, and the way it could melt into her beauty so quickly that it sometimes it was almost frightening.

"Look, you have this Friday off, don't you? Why don't I get off work early that day and we can have dinner and some 'us' time until you have to work the next evening? How does that sound? Good?"

He gathered her into his chest and for a moment, she was stiff and still, like a furious doll that had been fashioned out of iron. Then she nodded into his shoulder, her anger seeming to drift away like feathers in a breeze, and murmured, "That sounds really good. I just miss you when you're at work all the time, Teddy. With our schedules, it's hard to see you as it is..."

"I know, I know. I'm sorry. I just want to push as hard as I can to show people I really deserve this and that Uncle Harry didn't just hand the job to me."

"I understand. I want you to do well too." She was still snuffling into his shirt but when she tilted her head back to look at him, her eyes were dry. "I love you, Teddy. So much. I hope you know that."

Threading his fingers into her hair, Teddy rested his chin on top of Victoire's head. She always fit in his arms so perfectly, as if she had always been meant for him to hold.

Teddy had always known he and Victoire would end up together.

"I do."

* * *

><p>The coroner's office was a dingy little place on the lowest floor of St. Mungo's. Teddy had been there on several occasions and it was the same as ever as he and Owen walked in, the air almost thick with detection charms and it had a staleness he had attributed to the preservation spells that had to be used to prevent decay. He tried to breathe through his nose. There had always been a kind of antiseptic smell in here and it never failed to give him a headache.<p>

"Hey, Earl," Owen said to the old man who was bent over a tiny desk, almost completely hidden behind towers of paperwork. "How you holding up these days?"

Earl, the coroner, grumbled as he extricated himself from behind the desk. "You ask that every time you come in and I still don't think you want a real answer. "

Owen looked scandalized and hurt. "Earl, mate! I'm hurt you would think that of me!"

Earl was a little midget of a man who wore white work robes that brought out the last wisps of hair still clinging to the base of his scalp and a tiny pair of spectacles was perched on his pinched, wrinkled nose.

He scowled at them, his face pinching and wrinkling even more than before.

"Well if you must know, the rheumatism in my knees is particularly bad today and when I told my wife this morning she said it was what I got for being so -"

Teddy cut in, realizing they'd be there all afternoon unless he said something. "We're actually here for a case, Earl."

Earl sent him a dirty look through his glasses and muttered, "Knew it wasn't a social call." Shuffling through the nearest pile he pulled out a folder. "You're here about the alleyway murder?"

Owen nodded good-naturedly. Sometimes Teddy wondered if there was anything that could make Owen unhappy

"That's one of Carl's cases. I'll get him for you."

Still grumbling, Earl tottered off to the back room as Teddy's stomach turned. Carl was the assistant coroner, having been brought on as a future replacement for Earl as he prepared to retire, and he gave Teddy the creeps.

Carl followed Earl back into the room and Teddy hated how eerily silent his footsteps were. While almost anyone could tower over Earl, Carl even dwarfed Owen, who was as tall and wirey as a Norse beanstalk. A man that size shouldn't have been able to move so quietly. He had a sort of ageless face – Teddy could have pegged him for anywhere between twenty-five and sixty – and deep-set, beetle black eyes, all topped by a scalp of scraggly brown hair that was streaked with gray in a way that made it look like someone had dumped a dustpan over it.

He nodded in greeting, motioning them back, and Owen, who had no reservations where Carl was concerned, grinned and followed.

Carl's desk was crammed into a small corner of the next room and it was littered with knickknacks: mysterious rock paperweights held stacks of documents in place, tribal masks hung on the wall staring out with empty eyes, and the ornate teacup and pot that sat on his desk, still steaming, looked practically ancient and of some east Asian origin. Clearly, Carl had been places that Teddy could only dream of.

He flicked his wand and a large tray slid out of the hole that appeared in the wall, the telltale shapes of feet and a nose visible from beneath the sterile-looking sheet.

"There wasn't really much to do with him. The detection spells showed the residue of at least one binding enchantment but no other magic." Carl slid on some disposable rubber gloves. "The interesting thing – well, I'm sure you read it in the autopsy. Want to take a look?"

Remembering what he'd read in the report this morning, Teddy shook his head in distaste and motioned for Owen to go instead.

Lifting the sheet, Owen _hmmm_-ed agreeably as Carl pointed things out to him. "It's just like the report said, clean cuts, nothing left behind." He let the sheet fall back into place and asked, "And there wasn't anything left in the alleyway with him?"

Taking his latex gloves off with a sickening snap, Carl shook his head. "No. It seems after they cut it out, they took it with them."

"Who on earth would want anything to do with a human heart?" Owen mused out loud. "I mean, one that isn't currently pumping blood around their own body. What that's for is kind of obvious."

Carl rubbed at his stubbling beard, coal eyes glittering with interest. "I saw something like this once. "

"Really? Where? When?"

He waved Owen's questions off with a spidery hand. "It was a long time ago. You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

Not for the first time, Teddy tried and failed to place Carl's accent. His words had strange lilts and curves that made him suspect he wasn't originally from England and Teddy added that mystery to the growing pile.

He leaned back against the desk and crossed his arms. "Try us."

"When I was in Asia, I heard of a legend about a woman that would seduce men and eat their livers."

Owen made a face, mouthing the word '_livers_?' with distaste and Teddy shrugged at him.

"The story goes that she wasn't a woman at all, but a shape shifter, who could take the form of an animal – usually a magical fox they call a _gumiho_."

"Yeah, but you said that's just a legend – " Owen started, sounding disturbed.

"That's what I thought when I heard it, but while I was working in Japan, there was a case like this. I was ready to just call it your typical homicidal oddity, but then, looking closer, I saw it: the cutting hadn't been done by a blade; it had been done with claws."

A chill coursed up and down Teddy's spine as he imagined a fox's teeth trying to tear at his chest, chewing at his ribcage.

"Of course, it was never proven," Carl amended, probably seeing their horrified expressions. "But most cultures have a story like that – vicious animals masquerading as women to catch their prey.

He counted them on his fingers. "There's the _kitsune_ and _hone-ona_ of Japan, the Hungarian _liderc,_Lamia of Greek mythology. Even our ancient traditions refer to succubi and nixies." He replaced the sheet, smoothing down the edges of it until they lay flat over the body. "Of course, all of those disappeared long ago, as far as we know, but the one that's still around today is the Veela."

"But a Veela would never tear someone's heart out," Teddy said quickly, thinking of Victoire's pretty hands tracing patterns into the soft skin of his belly as they lay in bed together. She didn't even let her fingernails grow very long, which made the idea of her having talons even more repulsive.

"Of course not," Carl agreed easily, flicking his wand to send the body back into the hole in the wall. "Funny that they should have the power to turn themselves into something with claws and yet they never seem to use them."

Teddy didn't think funny so much as it was a ridiculous thought. Victoire's great-great-grandmother had been a Veela, had been human enough to have normal children. He'd seen pictures of her beautiful face, so like Victoire's in its shape and planes and angles. There was no way she could have been a vicious monster.

He grunted a farewell to Carl and tapped his foot impatiently as Owen cheerfully chatted with Earl on their way out. This was a human crime, and Teddy pushed any doubts he had about that out of his mind.


	2. Part II

_Part II_

Teddy's grandmother had hardly been the "I love you" type. He was aware that Andromeda had never really liked his father that much, which was hardly a surprise, considering he had been a werewolf, and honestly, Teddy had always suspected that for the first several years of his life, his grandmother had kept him at arms length until she was sure that none of his dad's lycanthropy had been passed down. So the times when she did say that she loved him, Teddy was aware that there were strings attached.

Even his Uncle Harry, who had always treated him as one of his own children – only infinitely more precious because Teddy was a last link to one of his father's greatest friends – was emotionally stilted in his own way. And while it was obvious that he did love his family, saying it was not something he was in the habit of doing.

But Victoire came from one of those "I love you" families. Her parents said it to each other multiple times a day, chanting it to their kids every night as they fell asleep, when they woke up, whenever they left the house, and Victoire continued that pattern when she and Teddy had begun dating seriously.

And it wasn't that he didn't love her. At least, he didn't think that was the problem.

Victoire was important to him, possibly more than anyone else in his life, but telling her that, actually saying the words, was a lot more difficult than just thinking it.

Honestly, it was something he'd never had the courage to do.

It used to make her angry. They'd fought about it countless times over the years – they still did, in fact – but she had stopped expecting a reply from him by now.

He wanted to say it. The deep cold of the silence that followed whenever Victoire said she loved him always seemed to expand inside of his chest painfully, like a hot air balloon, only freezing, as thought it were made of ice.

But no matter how much Teddy tried, no matter how much he wanted, the words simply wouldn't come.

* * *

><p>"Did you see the report Twilby turned in yesterday afternoon?" Owen asked the next day and the question took a few seconds to filter through to Teddy's brain. He had been poring over files, dissecting every bit of information he'd been able to dig up on the victim, a Mr. Ajax Williams, age thirty-four, of King's Cross, since before lunch.<p>

He looked up from his papers and stretched his neck. "Twilby turned in a report? Shocking. What for?"

"Breaking and entering in an abandoned store on Knockturn Alley two nights ago."

"And this is important because?"

"Hang on, I'm getting to that. I guess a neighbor reported it, which is odd in itself for Knockturn Alley if you think about it, because they avoid any contact with the Ministry like we're the viral plague. Anyway, Twilby went to take a look early yesterday morning and said it looked like there had been some kind of... ritual there."

"What made him think that?"

He pointed out a line in the report. "It's right here: a pentagon burnt and carved into the wood flooring, with blood stains on the floor and the remnants of what looked like a small fire. Sounds like someone was trying to dabble in some Sorcery."

Sorcery (those more reverent of it called it Old Magic in hushed tones) was the use of unharnessed and unfiltered magic. Magic in its most pure and mysterious form. Things like having magical blood, whether inherited or gifted by nature, gave the power to control magic, and using wands helped strengthen that control even further.

But the practice of Sorcery didn't require a wand or even magical blood. It appealed to the magic that hung in the air, unused, unbound and undiluted. This was usually for more paranormal practices: as a medium to talk with ghosts or force divination from spirits or even, at its most twisted, attempting necromancy.

Of course, Teddy only knew about this from the very, _very_ brief mention his history teacher had made of it back in school. Dark Magic, magic harnessed and used for harm or other evil purposes, was looked down upon, but Sorcery was taboo of the most serious kind. Magic unbound could not be trusted. Too often it had a mind of its own.

"Sorcery? I don't think I've heard of a case involving that in… years."

"That's not the interesting part. Twilby, through some moment of brilliance – "

"A rare occurrence, I'm sure," Teddy snorted in disbelief.

Owen spoke over him, " – did an essence charm on the pile of ashes and you'll never guess what he came up with."

"Astonish me."

"The shape of a human heart."

Teddy nearly dropped the quill he was holding. "A heart? You mean – "

"Like the one we're missing?" Owen grinned at him. "Precisely."

"What about the blood he found on the floor? Did he – "

"Check it for any magical properties? Yes, but there weren't any present, so he gave it to our connection with the local Muggle police and they found a match with a Muggle woman that was found dead in the street yesterday morning."

"So that means that they were both probably killed expressly for the ritual."

"That's what I decided too. Of course, the problem now is that there's absolutely no way to catch whoever did it. Both bodies and the room were completely clean."

Teddy sat back, balancing his chair on two legs and feeling stumped. "It's odd that whoever did this would leave the debris from the whole thing for someone else to find. They were so careful with the murders."

"I don't know what to tell you. I think it's odd too, but we're grasping at straws here."

Teddy duplicated Twilby's report and stacked on top of all his other papers. "I'm going to do some research. You don't think there'd be anything on this stuff in the Department of Mysteries library, do you?"

"They did confiscate all the 'unsuitable' books from the Death Eater house raids all those years ago. There's bound to be _something_."

"It's worth a shot at least. Can you stay here in case Uncle Ha – Mr. Potter needs us for something?"

"Sure thing." Owen busied himself with his tea, making a tower by stacking his biscuits one on top of the other and Teddy rolled his eyes, gathering the papers into his arms.

"If anyone needs me, I'll be buried under a pile of books."

Hopefully anything he found would take them one step closer to solving the case.

* * *

><p>The distress call from St. Mungo's reached the Aurors just after midnight that night.<p>

Teddy had stayed late in the Unspeakables' library, trying to find any shred of evidence that might connect the man they found in the alley with the pentagon that had been discovered. He had been poring over reports and maps and any book with a mention of Sorcery that he could find for so long he didn't even realize he was supposed to have met Victoire for dinner nearly four hours ago until Twilby had burst into the library yelling something about a fire. He said the rest of the Aurors had already gone and he had been left to get as many people as possible that might be able to help.

Twilby had shoved a Portkey at Teddy and he had never been so thankful that Victoire had Fridays off work. She was safe at home, waiting for him.

When his feet found the ground again, it was on a city street that was lit entirely by the glowing light of a raging fire.

The flames were already coming out the windows of the lower floors of St. Mungo's, licking the wooden frames into ashes and Teddy spotted Owen a few feet away, holding the small shape of a child in his arms and staring up at the burning building in some kind of horrified awe.

"Why aren't you – " Teddy started, his wand ready to cast a water charm, when Owen yelled over the roaring of the fire.

"It's Fiendfyre. There's nothing that can put it out. We had to evacuate."

Teddy nodded and prepared to Apparate to the roof to help, but Owen's hand on his arm stopped him.

"Is Victoire – ?"

He shook his head. "She had the night off. Where do you need me?"

"The upper floors are all clear. We think there might still be some people trapped on the third floor, but there's no way to get to them. The building's going to collapse at any – "

Before Owen could even finished his sentence, Teddy had already Apparated to the fourth floor stairwell. Sprinting down the flight, he cast a quick Bubble-Head Charm to protect himself from the choking smoke and threw himself through the door.

The heat was overwhelming, pressing in from all sides like a furnace, and he could feel the sweat begin pouring off his skin. The fire had just started to eat through the floor and Teddy wasn't sure if it was the fumes or simply the magical nature of the fire, but he could have sworn he saw animals with jaws of fire chewing away at the tiles.

Shaking his head to clear it, he called out, "Hello? Anyone?"

Teddy strained his ears to hear over the angry howl of the blaze and the loud crack of a piece of the flooring tumbling down into the sea of fire below. Anyone that was trapped here wouldn't survive much longer with the building falling to pieces.

"Help!"

Teddy could have sworn he heard a small voice call from down the corridor, and he moved towards the sound. The fiery animals that had been attacking the floor seemed to have grown wings, birds of flame flitting through the air and tearing the walls into embers with scorching talons.

"Help, somebody, please!"

The faint cry had become a terrified scream, and Teddy followed it into a room to his right. The smoke was so thick there he could hardly see two feet in front of him, but Teddy thought he caught a glimpse of a woman's hair shining brightly through the pillaring cloud.

The person screamed again, and it was blood curdling and desperate. He reached up to wave the smoke out of his eyes and instead, his hand ran into his Bubble-Head Charm, popping it.

"I'm here! Take my hand!" He coughed as the smoke rushed into his mouth, burning his throat and making his eyes tear.

Without warning, a piece of the ceiling broke loose, falling like a ball of fire, and hit him on the shoulder. Teddy cried out as the pain tore through him and beat at the fabric of his robe, trying to put out the fire that clung to it. A wolf of solid flame had tried to tear at it with teeth made of embers, but when he hit it, the animal seemed to go up in a cloud smoke. His right arm hung numb and useless at his side. Teddy was beginning to think he might not make it out of this fire alive.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a small hand reaching out through the smoke and he grabbed it with his good arm.

"You okay?" he called, thinking that even if he wasn't able to get them both out of this, then at least neither of them would have to die alone, when he caught sight of the ring on the woman's hand. It was the ring he had given Victoire that Christmas. He strained his eyes and thought he could see the shimmer of her silver hair through a gap in the smoke.

"Victoire?" He dragged his body as close has he could manage and her familiar face came into view. There were tears streaming down her cheeks as she coughed from the fumes. "Victoire, what are you doing here?"

Her eyes widened a fraction at the sight of him and he saw that they where bloodshot and irritated.

"Teddy," she rasped and he could barely hear her over the howling of the flame animals as they began to surround them both, circling like vultures. "Teddy, I'm so sorry! I was so angry at you and I – "

She coughed again, and Teddy saw her eyes roll back into her head, the whites blank and frightening. He screamed her name as her hand went limp in his. Another piece of the ceiling fell and out of the corner of his eye, he saw the shape of a bird dive towards them. A falcon of fire. The silly thought – that that was the form of Victoire's Patronus – crossed his mind, and with the last bit of energy he had, he raised his wand, injured arm screaming in pain.

The fiery bird seemed to throw open its wings as it fell through the air, tongues of fire trailing like feathers, and it opened its beak in a murderous scream. Teddy clutched at Victoire's wrist hard enough to bruise, staring right into the blazing eyes of the bird, and Dispparated.

* * *

><p>The next thing Teddy was aware of was his senses being assaulted by the sights and sounds of a makeshift hospital room filled with bustling Healers and his Uncle Harry's concerned face hovering above him.<p>

"Teddy?"

The light reflected harshly on the lenses of his uncle's glasses and Teddy shut his eyes tightly against the pain the flashing caused.

"I think he's awake," Harry called urgently and was pushed aside as someone, probably a Healer, Teddy thought, began to examine him. She lifted open both of his eyelids, shining a bright _lumos_ into them, and checked his pulse.

"You're lucky to be alive, taking a risk like that," the Healer, an older woman with salt and pepper hair, said as she waved her wand over his chest in a practiced manner that said she probably did this a hundred times a day.

Teddy tried to say he felt more like he'd been run over by a train than he did lucky, but the quick rush of air into his lungs sent scoring pains all through his windpipe. He clutched at his throat with one hand, his right arm lying helplessly at his side, and the Healer clucked at him.

"Try not to speak." If Teddy could have said anything, he would have made a snide remark about how he had figured that out himself, thanks. Instead, he had to settle for a glare. "Your esophagus sustained some serious scorching from the heat and smoke of the fire. It'll be a few days before it heals enough for you to be able to talk."

Teddy looked down at his arm, remembering the piece of the ceiling falling on top of him like a flaming comet and the wolf that had torn at him with teeth made of fire.

"I've numbed your shoulder and mended the collar bone but the burn... Since it was a magical fire, I'm afraid there's not much more I can do. It'll have to heal in its own time."

The skin of his shoulder and the whole right side of his chest had been seared away and Teddy watched as the angry charred red of the burn disappeared underneath wrappings as the Healer bandaged it up.

"I'm putting your arm in a sling for a week or two and you should be fine on your own while it heals. Thankfully, most of our potions stores were able to be salvaged, so I can give you something for the pain."

She went on to describe what she was giving him – a replenishing tonic to help his lungs, a pain relief potion, a salve for the burn and enough dreamless sleep potion to last him until his arm and chest healed – but Teddy had stopped listening.

His head ached and felt heavy, as if it was filled with smoke from the fire. More than anything, he wished he were at home, lying in bed with Victoire's cool hands on his forehead.

"Teddy!"

The piercing cry cut through the Healer's warnings about the dangerous side effects of mixing potions that he had been ignoring anyway.

There was a flash of silver hair and suddenly a woman was weeping all over his bandaged chest. He reached out with his good arm, glad that Victoire was here at last, and felt some of the tension begin to seep out of him. Uncle Harry appeared in the doorway behind the Healer, along with Uncle Bill.

Uncle Harry looked tired, Teddy thought he must have helped with the fire, and there were anxious lines showing around Uncle Bill's eyes.

"Be careful of his shoulder," Uncle Bill said quietly as Victoire continued to sob intelligible things into the blanket, clutching at Teddy's hands, and he came up next to the bed. The light made his face look strangely pale and drawn up close. "I'm so sorry, Teddy." Uncle Bill looked down at her again and put a hand on her shoulder. "She's – pretty upset."

She lifted her head to look at Teddy, shoulders still shaking, and he blinked. He wasn't sure if he was seeing things or not, because the crying woman wasn't Victoire like he had thought.

It was Aunt Fleur.

In the background he could hear Uncle Harry asking the Healer about taking him home and the edges of everything seemed to go fuzzy.

Home.

Victoire would be at home. He just wanted Victoire.

Teddy got one more glimpse of Aunt Fleur's tearstained face, blue eyes welling with tears like an endless flood, and then his eyelids slid shut.


	3. Part III

_Part III_

Teddy had been having dim dreams about wandering through endless tunnels when he was jerked back to consciousness by the searing pain from his shoulder.

Blinking confusedly around the blinding pain, he saw that he was in his bedroom at home, everything lit with grey light that peeked in from around the shades. Uncle Harry must have taken him home.

On the bedside table, he saw the faint outlines of the potions bottles the Healer had given him. Reaching for one blindly, fingers slick with cold sweat, he downed a gulp and prayed it was a pain relief potion.

The pain in his shoulder did seem so fade a bit, but another wave of drowsiness, as strong and inevitable as a rip tide, washed over him.

"Teddy?"

He thought he saw Victoire standing in their bedroom doorway, outlined in the gray light like a ghost.

"Teddy," he heard her say again, and her voice was distant and silvery, as if he was in a dream.

More than anything, he wanted to be awake and see Victoire, hold her, talk to her, make sure she was safe, but he was fighting a losing battle with his eyelids.

The potion he'd taken was pulling him down, down, down into a deep, dark, dreamless sleep.

* * *

><p>The next time he woke, it was to the soft sound of fluttering curtains.<p>

Someone, probably Victoire, had opened the window while he slept and Teddy was glad for it. It was obviously morning and the sunlight was pouring through the shades, coloring the blankets in thick citrus stripes and making the room almost uncomfortably warm.

Teddy's shoulder and chest still ached, along with his head, and he groaned, throwing his good arm over his eyes to block the light.

"Are you too hot?" Victoire's voice came softly from the other side of the bed. "Should I shut the blinds?"

Her palm felt cool as it pressed against his forehead and brushed back some of his hair. He shook his head, not trusting his voice yet. What he really wanted was something to take away the dull ache that seemed to permeate his whole body.

"It's the blue bottle," Victoire said, her voice closer to his ear than before, and he thought she might have pressed a kiss to his cheek. "And the red bottle is the replenishing tonic."

He felt the mattress lift as she rolled away and heard her footsteps head off in the direction of the bathroom. Leaning over towards the bedside table, Teddy squinted at the bottles and grabbed two of them. He took a gulp of each of the potions and the pain began to gradually recede to the edges of his mind.

"Take some of the other one too," Victoire called from the other room. "The green one. You need more rest. The dreamless sleep potion should help."

And so Teddy took a sip of that too, feeling the waves of sleep start to pull him under again, and it was suffocating. He almost wished he hadn't taken it, hating how heavy it made his head as his eyelids shut out the sunlight.

He was asleep before Victoire came back into the bedroom.

* * *

><p>The man had come from nowhere.<p>

Teddy had been on a walk, escaping from the flat for some fresh air while Victoire was out for a bit, when he suddenly felt an arm around his neck, a stranger's wand pressing painfully into the hollow of his throat.

"Put your hands where I can – "

Before Teddy could even think, his Auror training had kicked in and he shoved his good elbow back into the man's solar plexus while slamming the back of his own head into his face simultaneously. There was a crack of his nose breaking and a scarlet spurt of blood, and the man dropped like a rock to the ground, his wand rolling away uselessly. Teddy stepped on it, breaking it in half and looked down at the man on the concrete.

What he saw made his blood run cold.

The man's eyes were wide and empty, staring blankly up into the night sky as the blood continued to flow out of his broken nose, and his arms and legs jutted out awkward angles in a way that reminded Teddy of a rag doll and had his stomach turning.

Teddy scrambled over to him, kneeling and gripping his wrist, praying for some kind of pulse, but the man's body was still, his heart beating more and more slowly as his life drained away.

Teddy realized that he had killed him.

The moonlight was glimmering off the wet pool of blood that was gathering around the man's head and Teddy felt sick.

His mind was unraveling, he could feel it, like the unbound ends of an old sweater. The man's hand finally went limp in his and Teddy felt the cold start to seep into his stomach like an ice cube.

He was an Auror, meant to protect people, and he had killed someone. Dropping the man's hand, Teddy scrambled up to his feet, wanting to run, to get as far away as possible from this –

"It was an accident," said Victoire's voice from behind him. He turned to look at her and she was a vision etched in silver and white against the dinginess of the alley. "And even if it wasn't, it was justice. Don't you think?"

He opened his mouth, uncertain as she took a step towards him, her eyes looking from his face to the body lying at his feet. "I – "

"One criminal's death to prevent the hundreds of crimes he might have committed in the future. To make up for the ones in his past." The corners of her mouth lifted into almost a smile and the whites of her eyes seemed brighter than usual in the night. "Justice."

Teddy's mouth felt parched and he had to peel his tongue off the roof of his mouth.

He parroted her: "Justice."

This time Victoire did smile, lips spreading wide to show her teeth, and for a moment her incisors seemed strange, sharp and horrifying, until Teddy caught sight of her dimpling cheeks. Just a trick of the shadows, of the starlight, he thought, deciding that the aftershocks of adrenaline must be making him see things.

Then he realized that she was out on the street in the dark. "What are you doing out? It's not safe – "

He motioned to the body behind him, guilt sliding back down into his stomach, and she gave a tinkling little laugh that almost sounded to him like the breaking of glass.

Teddy shook his head. The cold night hair was really messing with him.

"With you around to protect me, I'm not afraid." Smiling, she reached forwards and ran her fingernails against the line of his jaw. "But I was worried. You weren't at home and you didn't leave a note, so I came to look for you. And I found you."

She was wearing a white sundress that ruffled around her legs in the breeze and the top of it left her neck and collarbones bare to the moonlight.

"Come home, Teddy," she said, holding out her hand towards him. "He's just some criminal. No one of consequence. Such justice is above the law. Nobody needs to know about this but us."

"Nobody but us," Teddy repeated.

And she sounded so sure, so positive, that he took her hand and let her lead him away down the street.

Out of the corner of his eye, Teddy thought he saw something move, a shadow against more, inky black shadows and he almost turned to investigate. But when he tried, Victoire smiled at him again and held his hand tighter.

"Come home with me, Teddy," she repeated, and the way she said it, floating, metallic, like sunlight cutting through mist, gave him no choice but to follow.

* * *

><p>When he finally got to go back to work, it was almost a relief.<p>

After that first day at home and that night in the alley, he hardly saw Victoire. She was gone a lot, working with the rest of the St. Mungo's staff as they tried to rebuild everything that had been lost in the fire and he had taken to using the dreamless sleep potion to pass the time while she was gone. And he found that the more he slept, the more he was able to forget about what had happened with the mugger that night in the alleyway.

He knew it was probably an unhealthy thing to do, but listlessly sitting around their empty flat, waiting for Victoire to get home with only his own thoughts for company was hardly good for him either.

The office looked exactly the same as always, crowded cubicles covered in parchment and bottles of ink, too many people gathered around the water cooler in the corner by the kitchen gossiping, and Owen lounging at their shared desk scribbling away at some paperwork.

"Oh," Owen said when Teddy reached him and he took his feet down from where they had been propped up on the desk. "I didn't know you were going to be in today."

"I couldn't stand another moment at home. I need something to do to keep me distracted from – " he gestured to his injured arm, " – everything."

"Okay," Owen said slowly. "Are you doing alright? You look exhausted."

"I've been having some trouble sleeping actually. Never was very good at sleeping on my back, but it's kind of impossible not to with my shoulder." Owen was still eyeing him warily, as thought he expected Teddy to begin falling apart. "Look: I'm fine. Give me something to do or I think I'll go crazy."

Nodding, Owen pulled out the other chair for him to sit in.

"I've been looking into the St. Mungo's fire while you've been gone, and it looks like whoever started it was targeting the coroner's office."

"The coroner's office? You mean the morgue?"

"I know. I thought it was odd too. At first, I figured that maybe they thought starting from the basement would ensure that the whole building would be destroyed, but no matter where they set the Fiendfyre, it wouldn't have stopped until it burned the whole place to the ground." Owen leaned in, as thought he didn't want anyone to overhear what he was about to say. "I don't know why, but I keep getting this feeling like this is all connected to those alleyway murders."

"You mean – "

"What if someone set that fire to get rid of the body we found? Fiendfyre is really Dark magic, which is something most people stay as far away from as possible these days. But obviously the person killing and performing that ritual – if they're willing to dabble in Sorcery, Dark Magic is probably like child's play."

"So there's been nothing more other than the fire since I've been gone?"

"No. I looked into the Muggle woman, but nothing really jumped out at me to indicate a pattern."

"Mind if I take a look?"

"Everything the police gave me about her is in that file right there." Teddy pulled it towards him and began to flip through it. "It's not much but – "

"This is her?" Teddy held up a picture of a pretty woman with long dark hair, probably in her early twenties.

"Yes."

"Don't you think she looks a lot like – "

"Charlotte? Yeah, they look a lot alike. But I asked her and she said there was no relation. Speaking of… " Owen called over Teddy's shoulder. "Char, love. How are you today?"

Teddy turned, steadying himself with his good arm, and saw her walking towards down the aisle towards them. She was wearing blue robes today, a deep cerulean color that made her skin look even more olive than usual.

"Fine. Thanks for asking, Owen." She smiled at them both. "Teddy, do you think I could talk to you alone for a moment?"

"Of course."

He followed her into the archives room, the door closing behind him to shut out the noise of the office.

"I didn't think you would be back to work so soon. Are you okay?" She was looking up at him earnestly, dark eyes wide and Teddy sighed.

"I wish everyone would stop asking me that. I wouldn't be here if I wasn't." Agitated, he ruffled his hair. "What did you want to talk to me about?"

Looking shy, she said, "I just wanted you to know… If there's anything you need, anything at all, just let me know."

He saw her shift in the dim light and was startled by the feel of her lips on his cheek.

"What are you – "

She stopped his mouth with her hand and smiled at him almost coyly, dark eyelashes fluttering. "Remember. Anything at all."

The door opened and shut behind her as she left Teddy standing, bewildered, with the mark of her kiss still burning on his cheek.

* * *

><p>The moment Teddy caught sight of the apartment door the next night he knew something was wrong. It was slightly ajar, a small slip of parchment lying in front of it. Drawing his wand, he scooped up the paper and edged inside the door.<p>

The bookshelf that he usually placed his keys on had been overturned, the books strewn over the floor, some of them in pieces, mixed with the stuffing that had been hacked out of the furniture and glass from the broken side table.

Someone must have broken in and trashed their flat. Unfolding the parchment in his hand, he saw his name had been written and then crossed out, with a skull and crossbones drawn over it crudely with blood-red ink. He suppressed a shudder. The person who had done this obviously didn't like him very much.

He looked around at the mess, taking in shattered picture frames and overturned furniture, and jumped when he caught sight of Victoire standing in the middle of the living room, staring straight at him.

"Hello Teddy."

He clutched his chest, heart pounding in his throat. "Victoire. What happened? Did you see who – "

"Who's Charlotte?" Her face was completely blank and Teddy began to get an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"Charlotte?" he asked, confused. "She's Uncle Harry's secretary. Why…?"

"Just Uncle Harry's secretary? There's never been anything between you two? Nothing for you to feel guilty about?"

He remembered earlier that day in the archives room, her coy smile and her lips on his cheek, and swallowed.

Victoire's voice went cold and hard. "I knew it. I knew there was something." She began to pace, each footstep punctuated by the crunch of broken glass. "No wonder you always work such late hours. If there's something pretty there for you to look at then there's no reason for you to come home – "

"It's not like that! She came on to me, but I never did anything – "

"I can't believe I was ever so stupid to let the fact that you never could say you loved me go like it didn't mean something. Of course it meant something."

There were tears in her eyes now and she was beginning to sound a little hysterical. She picked up the picture frame that sat on the coffee table, a snapshot of the two of them waving cheerfully at the camera on Victoire's last day at Hogwarts, and threw it at the wall. The glass shattered, exploding into a shower of sharp pieces, and Teddy recoiled. "You can't say you love me because you _don't_. You never did!"

"No, that's not true! I lo – " The word caught in his chest and he was having a hard time breathing. He just couldn't say it.

"See! Even now, you won't say you love me!" She let out a moan that was midway between anger and sadness and Teddy flinched at the sound. "What next? Are you going to leave me for her?"

"Victoire, how can you say that?" he pleaded, as if to call her back to her senses. "After all this time, how could you even think – "

"I don't know what to think!" Her eyes had somehow gone from deep blue to tawny and the angles of her face were sharp and furious in the light. Her voice broke as she snarled, "You care more about your work that you do about me. More about _justice_ than the woman waiting for you here at home!"

Her skin seemed strange all of a sudden, lined, patterned and broken, as if it were about to burst into pieces, and she pulled at her hair wildly.

"You never loved me and I – I – " Victoire seemed to choke on the words and she clutched at her throat as though she couldn't breathe.

Suddenly, she screamed, head jerking back and eyes slamming shut, pain written in every line of her face. Then, just as unexpectedly, as if every muscle in her body had gone limp, she fell silent and dropped to the floor in a heap.

Teddy stumbled forward towards her, horrified, and shook her shoulders.

"Victoire? Victoire!" He cradled her head in his arms, holding her to his chest, and felt the slight shift of her ribcage has she took in a faint breath.

She had just passed out then. He let out a sigh of relief and stroked her hair until it was smooth again. Once she came to, they could talk this out and things would be okay again.

And he would try to say he loved her. He would try as hard as he could to make it true.

* * *

><p>Once, Teddy had run across the Veela entry in one of the encyclopedias that was kept in the Unspeakable's library. It had been an accident, with the book falling open to that page randomly and honestly, he had quite forgotten that the Veela was even considered a beast in the first place. He had known Aunt Fleur and her and Uncle Bill's children for so long that he would never have connected the idea of Veela with something inhuman.<p>

The entry wasn't long, only a few paragraphs, but it was the illustration that had caught his eye. It had been enchanted to move, like in most magical textbooks, and showed a woman, stunning and silver haired with eyes like sapphires, and Teddy's first though had been that she was the spitting image of Victoire. Slightly different from her mother's face, with her kindly rounded jaw and cheekbones, or her brothers, who both had their dad's long nose and thin lips, Victoire was all beautifully sharp angles that looked like they could have been carved out of diamond.

The woman in the picture had seemed to smirk up at him, her liquid starlight hair fanning out as if it had been caught in a breeze, and Teddy had been enraptured. He thought he could have looked at that image forever, drinking in the bowed perfection of her lips, the smooth curve of her waist, her swanlike neck. Her flawlessness almost hurt his eyes.

After a moment though, the woman began to change. Her eyes seemed to glaze as the pupils dilated and dilated, until they covered the whites and had grown beady and bulbous, too large for her face. But that too had begun to shift, the angles becoming even sharper as the straight patrician line of her nose protruded forward until it seemed to break the skin, revealing the sharp shape of a beak underneath.

The silver hair had begun to stick to itself, spreading, smoothing down her back and arms, less silver and more a dirty gray, and that was when Teddy had caught sight of the woman's hands.

Her slim, feminine fingers had tapered into terrible talons, claws that looked sharp enough to cut through skin taking the place of fingernails, and he hadn't been able to stop a shudder at the thought of those talons tearing into flesh.

The sheet of what had been hair had now covered almost her whole body like a grey blanket and suddenly her every muscle seemed to tense, as if all her nerves had been pulled painfully tight like a rubber band. She threw her head back, beak-like mouth torn open wide in a horrible silent scream, pain mingled with ecstasy, as a pair of wings burst from her shoulders and the whole silver coating of her body erupted in a flurry of feathers.

Teddy had stared down at the book in horror.

The flawless woman from before had transformed into some kind of many-taloned bird and somehow, her glassy black eyes had seemed to look through the page into his. Her beak opened in another scream and Teddy could almost hear it that time as her feathered wings had flapped, propelling her up towards him, talons extended as though she meant to gouge out his eyes, to tear at his skin.

Teddy had slammed the book shut and nearly shoved it off the table, blocking the bird-woman's horrible beady bird eyes from view, but he couldn't seem to get them out of his mind. He had seen the murder in those eyes. The terrible blood lust.

He had seen something that was not human at all.


	4. Part IV

_Part IV_

After some quick spell work to tidy up their wrecked flat, Teddy tucked Victoire into bed, still unconscious, and began to work through some paperwork to keep himself busy until she woke up.

He took another gulp or two of the pain potion to try and calm his nerves and would have taken a dose of the replenishing tonic if his hands hadn't been so shaky. The bottle bobbled as he tried to pick it up and it tumbled over onto the floor, shattering in a spill of liquid and red glass, and Teddy covered his face with his hands. He was almost out of dreamless sleep potion and he wasn't quite sure how he was going to survive without it.

The sound of someone knocking on the front door drifted through the flat and Teddy was surprised to find Victoire's younger brother, Dominique, waiting when the door opened.

Glad he had straightened the apartment after Victoire's jealous tirade, Teddy invited him inside.

"How are you?" he asked, a bit unsure as to why Dom would have stopped by. While they got along, he and Dom had never been particularly close. Teddy had always gotten the feeling that Dominique didn't like him that much.

Skipping the pleasantries, he held up what looked like a casserole, saying, "Mum wanted me to drop this off. She's sure you're probably not eating enough and says it isn't good for your health."

Dom had always looked more like Uncle Bill than Aunt Fleur, with his flaming red hair down to his shoulders and his thin face, but even so, he was still perfectly, almost painfully good-looking in the way that seemed to be unique to part Veela.

He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. "Mum – you should go and visit her sometime. She's always thought of you as another son and I think she misses you."

"Yeah, it has been a while," Teddy said distractedly, staring at the papers piled on the table in front of him and thinking of the murder case. "Work has been keeping me really busy. I'll see if I have time this week."

Shrugging, Dom moved towards the door to leave. He paused with his hand on the handle, seeming on the verge of saying something, but looked unsure.

After a moment he seemed to come to a decision. Looking back at Teddy, his eyes the same deep, deep blue as his older sisters, he asked, "Why didn't you go to Victoire's funeral?"

Looking over Dom's shoulder, Teddy could see Victoire's shadowed silhouette in the door of the bedroom staring at him with strangely bright, unblinking eyes and the way the darkness played across the angles of her face chilled him to the bone.

How could he have gone and stood in front of her body, still and pale and cold.

Empty.

Just a shade, a fraction of his Victoire, the woman he had known so intimately that she had been like part of him. Without having seen that, Teddy could believe that she was still here.

It was her hand he had held as he Apparated out of the fire. He was supposed to have saved her.

"She wouldn't have wanted me there."

And as Dom sighed resignedly and said his goodbyes, Teddy thought he saw Victoire nod as her mouth spread into a smile.

* * *

><p>The news that Charlotte had been found dead the next morning was a little hard to absorb.<p>

Owen had owled in sick and so it was Teddy that Carl had called in to his makeshift morgue to take a look at her and another body that had been discovered.

"I haven't had time to write out an official autopsy for either of the bodies, but I thought you should see this."

Carl slid on his gloves again, the smacking sound of the latex making Teddy nauseated, and looked almost sympathetic. Gesturing to the smaller of the two sheet-covered bodies, he said, "I know she worked in your office. I'm sorry about what happened. But first, the man…"

He trailed off, looking both disturbed and excited all at once and Teddy remembered why Carl freaked him out so much. "You should take a look. Here."

He shoved a pair of gloves at Teddy and pulled back the sheet. "You didn't see the guy from before, but I think you'll be able to see what I'm talking about anyway."

Teddy took a deep breath, bracing himself, and looked. It wasn't so bad since he had known what to expect, but even so, something seemed off. The hole was there, like the report from before had said, right in the center of the ribcage, but the edges of it –

"It's all jagged. I thought last time they were all clean cuts."

"They were. That's why I called you." He drew the sheet back over the man and went over to what Teddy thought was Charlotte's body. "You and your partner think that that Muggle woman and the man from before were killed by the same person, don't you? Look at this."

Teddy glanced down, doing his best to ignore Charlotte's face and saw the gash that ran across her throat. Shuddering, he looked away and Carl said, "I don't think either of these were done with a blade."

The murders from before had clearly been committed with a weapon and a certain level of finesse, but these…

"You don't mean…"

"This is what it was like that time in Japan."

Teddy felt his stomach turn as he remembered the picture of the Veela in the book, all talons and beady eyes, and thought of Victoire's skin, broken as if it was going to burst into feathers, her head thrown back as she screamed in pain while her fingernails dug deep cuts into her palms.

Carl looked at him grimly. "I think this was done with claws."

* * *

><p>That night Teddy dreamed he was walking down an alleyway towards a dark shape. The closer he got, the clearer the outline became. It was a person, a woman, bent over something, but she seemed strange, like her skin was patterned and lumpy, almost furry, and the sounds she was making were far from human, clicking and rustling around the mass on the ground before her.<p>

Teddy stepped closer, eyes straining to see in the dark and there was a flash of silver up ahead. He stumbled, accidentally kicking a rock, and the noise echoed loudly against the brick of the alleyway.

The woman's head snapped up at the sound and Teddy recoiled, catching sight of her eyes. They were swollen, glittering and jet-black, and the skin of her face was broken, like shattered pieces of glass, into a fan of gray feathers. The rest of the features though, the nose, the silver hair, the long neck, looked like Victoire's. She stood up from her crouch to face him, and he saw that her mouth, her chin and the whole front of her white dress were all covered with blood.

"_Victoire_ – " he started, trying to back away as she moved towards him. For a moment he thought she might smile at him, but when her lips opened, it was to reveal a set of fangs, impossibly long and dripping scarlet. She reached out, fingers too long and thin to be fingers, but not quite claws either, and clutched at his shirt, pulling him towards her.

"_Teddy_," she said, and it was almost a hiss, something animal and terrifying. Her fingers scraped the skin of his throat and he cried out in pain, feeling the blood as it welled out of the scratches. She pressed her mouth to the cuts, licking the blood away, and her tongue felt strange and rough, almost like a cat's. "_You're mine forever._"

Gasping, Teddy sat bolt upright in bed, hand clutching at his throat as if to make sure it was still intact, and he tried to remember how to breathe again.

The dream had felt so real it had his skin crawling and his stomach heaving.

During the day, in the coroner's office, at the Aurors, he had hardly let himself consider the possibility, but here, in the pitch black of his bedroom with only the sound of his own breathing for company, the idea seemed almost too real to ignore.

Grabbing a random potion bottle off of the bedside table, he settled back into the covers and swallowed as much of the liquid as possible. When nothing happened, he reached for another vial.

And then another.

Something, anything to push the thought that Victoire, his Victoire, might have something to do with these murders out of his mind.

* * *

><p>Instead of sleeping, Teddy ended up at the office and the whole place was empty in the night. He sat at his and Owen's desk, feet propped up, swirling a cup of coffee around and around until it was stone cold and undrinkable. The potions hadn't had the desired effect. If anything, they had just made him think more, and Teddy found his thoughts running in circles like the liquid in the cup.<p>

Around four o'clock, the Floo in the corner lit up and Twilby appeared in a blaze of emerald fire. Brushing the soot off his shoulders, Twilby adjusted his glasses and caught sight of Teddy.

"Lupin, what are you doing here?"

"Working late, trying to crack a case." It wasn't completely a lie and Teddy shrugged. "You?"

"Another breaking-and-entering report from Knockturn Alley. I thought I should go investigate sooner rather than later."

"Breaking-and-entering? In Knockturn Alley?" Teddy sat up, remembering what Owen had said about the pentagon, the ritual, Sorcery.

"Yes, two reports in just a few weeks. I hope this time I can nip it in the bud. Though I can tell you, my wife isn't happy I had to leave so suddenly in the middle of the night. She – "

"Let me go for you."

"What?"

"I'll go instead. You can head back home to your wife. I've got nothing better to do."

Twilby looked longing at the fireplace. "Well, if you're sure."

He told Teddy the address, jotting it down on a scrap of parchment for him, and disappeared back into the Floo with a pinch of powder. After he left, Teddy grabbed his cloak, putting out his desk light, and made his way over to the Auror's special Apparation point.

Knockturn Alley was empty when he appeared in the shadows and Teddy chanced a look up into the building he had ended up in front of. It was obviously an abandoned store, like so many in this Alley had ended up after the war, and he couldn't make out the name on the old sign that dangled by a single chain over the doorway because it was so covered with grime.

He opened the door, careful to make as little noise as possible, and stepped inside. His footsteps raised little puffs of dust from the floorboards and he thought from the glittering of hundreds of abandoned bottles that this must have been an Apothecary before it was left vacant.

There was a flight of stairs at the other end of the room and Teddy picked his way through the maze of bottles as quietly as possible. Testing the steps and climbing up them, he heard the boards from the floor above move as though there was someone walking across them. The door at the top of the flight was slightly ajar, a sliver of light peeking out from around the edges and he looked through the gap.

There was a man in the room, dressed in dark robes that brought out the black in his hair. He was standing in front of a table, fiddling with something, and barely paused when Teddy eased open the door.

"Mr. Lupin. I wondered if you might join me here tonight."

The pentagon Owen had mentioned before had already been carved into the floor, the ugly runes scrawled around its edges making Teddy's skin crawl as he tried to read them.

"How nice that you came when everything was prepared. Now you'll be able to watch."

He turned and Teddy could see that he was an older man, probably in his fifties, with dark hair and manic eyes.

"Watch? What are you planning on doing?"

"My dear boy, I thought you figured it out. I know the books the Ministry has on the subject of Sorcery are limited, but I would have at least expected an Auror to recognize attempted necromancy when they saw it."

Teddy swallowed the scared lump in his throat. Necromancy? "Who exactly are you planning on bringing back from the dead? That's impossible, you know."

"You're right, it is. But it is possible to _speak_ with the dead, and there are some things I very much wish to know that only the deceased can tell me."

He counted on his fingers, "The life-blood of a woman, the heart of a man removed while it was still beating; these are crude ingredients, to be sure, but I think they will be the most effective. Everything must be just right for the ritual to work. I found that out the hard way."

Teddy had some many questions he wanted to ask he had to fight to find his words for a moment. "The Muggle woman from before and the one you murdered last night – they looked alike. Did that have anything to do with it?"

"No, that was just for me. Something pretty to look at." The man's teeth were disgusting and yellowed as he leered. "The filthy Muggle one was nice enough, but the one last night… she was gorgeous. I was almost sorry I killed her. She was nearly as pretty as that little girlfriend of yours. I heard she died in the fire, by the way. Shame."

Teddy's throat seemed to squeeze shut. He knew about Victoire. How long had he been watching him? Watching them together?

"St. Mungo's. The fire. Was that you?"

He nodded, seeming pleased with himself. "You were getting too close, with the report your partner found about the building a few weeks ago, your meeting with the coroner. I wanted to destroy the evidence and warn you off. That's why I broke into your flat."

"…You?" His insides seemed to go cold. This man had been inside his home.

"_You_ trashed my apartment?"

He smiled slyly. "You didn't get my note?"

Teddy remembered the slip of parchment that had been in front of the doorway that night, with his name crossed out, and the more Teddy thought about it, the more the red ink in his memory looked like blood.

"I see you did." He twirled the knife in his hand between his fingers. "I wasn't positive you would show up tonight, otherwise I would have waited and used you, but I thought I would use someone else, just to be safe."

"Use me? You mean for whatever ritual you're playing at?"

"Playing at? This isn't a game." His eyes glowed manically and he went back to fiddling with the objects on the table compulsively, arranging and rearranging them. "It would have worked last time, if that woman hadn't been a Muggle. The blood has to be magical for my message to go through."

He lifted up the vial from the table and the blood inside of it looked impossibly dark red in the torchlight.

"You actually think you can speak to the dead or something? Are you crazy?" Teddy raised his wand, palm sweaty with nerves. "Put your hands where I can see them."

The man laughed and it was a strange rasping sound. Teddy tightened his grip and said, "Do it, or I'll have to take you in by force."

"Pumping yourself full of potions to make yourself forget what happened with that man in the alleyway. As if you could take anyone against their will. You haven't been in your right mind for weeks."

"Turn around and show me your hands! I'm warning you. I'll do it."

"I'd like to see you try," the man hissed and whirled towards him, knife in hand.

Before he could even think, Teddy's wand arm lashed out and he shouted, "_Avada Kedavra!"_

The green light exploded like lightening as man's body dropped to the floor like a stone, the life going out of him, and the knife skittered harmlessly across the floorboards with a clatter.

Teddy's wand fell from his shaking fingers and he gasped for air.

"Impressive, Teddy. I didn't know you had it in you." Victoire's voice came out of the shadows and Teddy felt his heart stutter. He saw her outline, eyes shining out of the darkness like a cat's, unblinking and almost too large for her face. "Cold-blooded killing."

She stepped out into the torchlight and touched the man's body gingery with a slippered foot. He remained motionless and she amended, "In the name of justice, of course. It's becoming a bit of a pattern for you though, isn't it?"

"You're not even real. I know that now." He grabbed his hair, pulling at it so hard his eyes blurred with tears. "Why do you keep tormenting me?"

Victoire continued as though he hadn't spoken. "This, the man in the alley last week…" She tilted her face towards him. "Me."

"You?"

"If you had just come home that night like you said you would, I might not have gone in to work, and then I wouldn't have been caught in the fire.

"It was your hand I held as I died."

He fiddled with the bandage he still wore on his shoulder, peeling part of it away to look at the angry red scar that the burn had left. Even if he couldn't see, he knew that the mark spread over his shoulder down on top of his heart.

"You _let_ me die, Teddy."

The words sunk in as she stared at him and the emptiness in her eyes began to fill up his chest, eating away at his insides like acid.

"You know, for a while, I almost thought it might be you. That you had become an animal, feeding off men's hearts like the old stories say. Before I realized you were gone and that I was making it all up. "

And the whole thing was so like his dream that Teddy wasn't surprised to see that as he spoke, Victoire's eyes had become wide and black, like a bird's, and the skin of her face and arms was spreading, breaking, into a beak and feathers on top of more feathers. Her talon hands reached for him, grasping at his injured shoulder as huge wings burst from her back.

"No, Teddy," she said, the horrible shattering animal sounds coming from her beaked mouth like before, and her talons dug into the scar painfully, right above his heart. "The only heart I ever wanted… was yours."

Teddy looked at her face for one last moment, watching as all the traces of the woman he had loved disappeared inside the viciousness of the animal, and then closed his eyes.

He had never told her how much he loved her. All she had ever wanted was his heart, and this was justice.

He remembered the dream, Victoire hissing "_you're mine forever_" and tearing at his throat, but instead he heard her let out a bird-like scream, filled with blood lust. There was a harsh rustling, like a million feathers cutting through the air, and Teddy threw open his arms, exposing his chest, and offered his heart to her claws.


End file.
